Garden Party Wall

Chris Parks gets the feeling that some 'Dirty Love...

Description 

Garden Party Wall is a 70' tall North Facing buttress just up the hill and Southwest of Sherwood Forest. It is visible from across the river and road from The Bihedral, Happy Hour Crag, and Security Risk, as a vertical ironing board of rock just uphill and west of Sherwood Forest.

The rock is predominantly shaded in the morning, but gets afternoon sun in the summer. The granite is good, and high friction, but only where the rock is clean of lichen flakes and moss. Side-pulls and sloper feet are the general rule on the 4 trad routes there.

If you climb trad here, bring a double set of small stoppers, and maybe a wire brush!

To descend, there is a 2-chain anchor on the north-most point of the wall above the trad routes. This makes a lousy TR anchor, however, as your rope will be run through a funnel to a finger-crack across the edge. Although the rap can be made without getting the rope stuck, TR'ing without that consequence seems unlikely.

The wall sports 5 routes, all of which are dirty and lichened, but all of which could improve with traffic. R. Rossiter's book gives two of the Trad Routes here stars, those being Right Crack (5.10c) and Dirty Love (5.10c). The moves are good, but do you love dirt? You'll have to climb through some on these routes.

In progress:

A. Arete 10a, 1p, gear.
B. Dirty Love, 10 R, 1p, 70', gear.
C. Right Crack, 10 R, 1p, 70', gear.
D. Filthy English Pig Dog, 9, 1p, gear.
E. Excalibur, 11+, 1p, bolts & pins.
F. Big Men On Paper, 11+, 1p, bolts & gear.
G. The Illusionist, 12-, 1p, 66', bolts & gear.
H. Topiary, 11+, 1p, 53', bolts.
I. Can't Please Everyone, 11-, 1p, 51', bolts.

Getting There 

Approach as for Sherwood Forest, coming first to the climbs on that wall. From the right-hand end of Sherwood Forest Crag proceed Southwest on a trail up the hill until the Garden Party Wall appears through the trees. Walk SW below it until you can clearly see a vertical gully of bad rock that bisects the two main buttresses. Approach the cliff at this point, climbing up a slot behind a flake to reach a shelf at the base of the left side for all of the trad routes, or proceed to the right-most arete on the right hand buttress to climb the single bolted line there.

The Classics